BULLYING AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF PRIMARY SCHOOL CHILDREN IN RIVERS STATE.

Abstract

The study examined bullying and cognitive development of primary school children in Rivers State. Three research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. A cross sectional research design was used for the study. A sample of 350 study participants was purposively selected for the study. An instrument titled: Bullying and Cognitive Development Questionnaire (BCDQ) was self-developed and used for data collection. The response options include: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree and Strongly Disagree. The instrument was face and content validated. The reliability coefficient was 0.861, this was obtained using Cronbach alpha statistics. The data obtained from the research questions were analyzed using mean and standard deviation while the hypotheses were tested using Spearman’s rank order correlation coefficient at 0.05 level of significance. Major findings of the study revealed that bullying impacts significantly on cognitive development of primary school children in Rivers State as it develops anxiety and stress which affects their emotional well-being and lowers their cognitive ability. The study recommends that, school heads should regularly monitor and supervise the activities of children in their schools to avoid bullying.